Scholars of decades past, current researchers, and various reform documents all deal, directly or indirectly, with the question of what constitutes good mathematics teaching. Often good teaching is situated in the context of broader educational goals, such as preparing literate citizenry. Researchers generally define good teaching implicitly with…

Current reform-driven mathematics documents stress the need for teachers to provide learning environments in which students will be challenged to engage with mathematics concepts and extend their understandings in meaningful ways (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000, "Curriculum and evaluation standards for school…

Teaching is a complex task shaped by many external and internal influences, including the beliefs held by individual teachers. This study sought an understanding of the impact of field experiences on the beliefs developed by preservice science teachers. The participants were students in an undergraduate science education methods course that…

Many excellent reading and writing teachers are facing important philosophical questions in their teaching. Many teachers lament that new guidelines have forced them to eliminate practices such as writing workshops, shared or guided reading, daily news, and read-alouds. The reasons why these teachers can no longer engage in these activities is…

The main purpose of the present study was to identify and examine the concerns of primary school teachers in Cyprus in relation to the recent implementation of a new mathematics curriculum and the use of new mathematics textbooks. An adaptation of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) was…

Given issues related to differences in learner characteristics, effective sampling across the content domain, and recent emphases on assessing meaningfully contextualised abilities and higher-order cognitive processes, the "traditional" mathematics test arguably does not provide a valid measure of student ability. Consequently, there is…

Many researchers have called for a broadening of the theoretical base of language teacher development programs to include gathering information not only on what teachers do in the classroom, but also on what they know, and how this knowledge is transferred to their teaching behavior, especially as they gain more experience in the classroom.…

Two teachers reflect on their combined experiences in teaching middle school, teaching preservice teachers, and teaching online in order to adapt and apply strategies for bringing positive experiences in a computer-based environment to middle grade students. The result is five valuable lessons, each of which is explained theoretically and…

In this article, the author shares the details of her visit to India in 2004 where she had the opportunity to conduct two workshops, one in Mumbai, previously Bombay, and the other one in Chennai, formerly known as Madras. She details her observations of the two groups, focusing first on the preservice group and moving on to the experienced…

As the mentoring program has currently constituted a central component in the partnership established between primary schools and teacher education institutions, this research aimed to investigate the practice of mentoring from the perspectives of student teachers and class mentors. The data were collected by means of open-ended questionnaires and…

In this article, the author shares his own reflections on his forty-odd years of teaching history at the college level. He shares one of the most important things he learned during his career as a history teacher: Instructors should make clear to their students at the beginning of any survey course what it is that they expect their students to…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the sense of Teacher Efficacy (TE) belief held by Singapore teachers for teaching primary social studies. Teacher Efficacy, which comprises Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE) and General Teaching Efficacy (GTE), was measured. A group of 116 primary school teachers attending a social studies in-service…

This paper uses information obtained from a group of primary teachers during their first year as teachers. It uses illustrations from their experience of induction to suggest some strategies that teachers and schools might consider if they wish to make the induction period one of opportunities to learn as well as to survive. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper considers the process of being in special measures and looks at the experiences that teachers in five primary schools encountered. It also endeavours to establish links with generally accepted characteristics of school improvement as identified in previous research on sustained primary school improvement and school improvement in…

In order to assess whether students fully grasped the six teaching standards in the "Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics" (NCTM, 1991), the researcher had each student submit peer evaluations of the team lessons that were taught in a Methods and Materials of Teaching Mathematics in the Middle Grades class during the Fall semester of…